Wednesday

For the record, my SB's treat was a blueberry muffin.  Really not bad either, considering that they probably baked it two weeks ago in Lower Slabockia.

One of the conclusions out of the FFF weekend was that our branch of the clan will likely roll into Incline Village on Friday, July 9th, and return to the Flatlands on Saturday the 17th.  2 and 3 have school/job issues that may impact their departure times.  We'll be looking to reserve a condo at Forest Pines.

Congratulations to the Iowa State crowd for the women's team's advancement to the Sweet Sixteen.  Celebrate now.  UConn is next up.  I couldn't even find a betting line on that game.  If the Stanford women (the #2 team) beat Iowa by 30+, my guess is that 30 may not be enough for the 'Clones to cover.  What's that say about the state of D-I women's basketball when a Sweet Sixteen game is off the charts?

Northern Iowa signed their b-ball coach to a 10 year extension today.  Beat KU and you become a media darling.  What's the liklihood that the biggest impetus on that move was the current vacancy about a hundred miles south on I-380?

A final anecdote from DM.  On our way out of town, we stopped at my friend Doug's place to pick up the raw data for preparation of his 2009 tax return.  He's been very successful professionally and his return reflects a variety of elements that make the return a bit out of the ordinary.  In conversation after the business was done, we were talking about the snow storm and the various inconveniences it caused.  He commented that we were witnessing that day the occurence of sublimation.  I was caught a bit clueless.

My immediate reaction was to recall the term sublime.  But I drew a blank on the derivation or the extension of sublime.  Doug explained that we were, in fact, watching the recently fallen snow transform from the solid state to the gaseous state without first becoming liquid.  You can look it up.  I was probably doing a crossword in the back of the class room that day.

(Remember, Doug was the one who randomly offered up the history of Cairn terriers last month.  The guy paid a lot of attention when he was in school.)

I had noticed the Winter's snowpack in my front yard "shrink" in the previous weeks, without the creation of a lot of slushiness, but it never occured to me that there was a scientific explanation for the phenomenon.

The Illinois-side local paper finally woke up and raised it's price to 50 cents.  It had been a quarter.  (At a quarter, why did they even charge?)  I've been buying it daily for the last couple of years for fodder at morning coffee.  They do a good job with coverage of the local Illinois high school sports on a daily basis, and, like I said, it was a quarter! 

The biggest problem with the SB's gold card is that it works best (only?) if you have money on it.  If you want your free cup card after every 15 purchases, you need to use the card, and trying to hand over money and the card is outside the skill-set of our baristas.  (What is the correct term for a male barista?  Or for that matter, a male, or female, amoeba?  But I digress.)  Anyway, by loading the card with a credit card purchase, you now have a more definitive record of your coffee expenditures.  Not a pretty sight.

And since I tend to give out my free cup cards to 2 or 4 as tokens of my fatherly affection, the current SB's Gold Card program has made a definite increase in my coffee budget.  (Actually, I really don't budget for coffee.  I just spend the money.  Life is too short.)

A bit of an aimless entry, but you get what you get.

BCOT